Rise of Kyrien

WJ Entry16 Kaer Maga Part 3

Kaer Maga Part 3

What are we gonna find next was answered pretty quickly. The next room was a huge square chamber, on the opposite wall was a raised balcony and there were three Scyrax tribesmen arranged along the balcony and another three on the floor below. All of em were chantin’, some sorta ritual or somethin’. Bein’ Scyrax, whatever they were up to wasn’t gonna be good for us. The floor of the chamber had a huge jagged pit in it that went, well, down …… somewhere ……. deep by the looks and there was a nasty lookin’ yelowish smoke comin’ up from it.

Eli looked at Silverwinter and said “Fireball them, before we get there” and then disappeared off into the gloom somewhere sneakin’ up on the Scyrax and the others all spread out makin’ for their targets. I dropped a fire blast on the centre Scyrax on the floor and Silverwinter caught almost all of them in a Fireball and the the rest of the group attacked. About then this …. thing … dragged itself up out of the pit, some sorta demon it was, summoned by the Scyrax. It was huge, kinda like a cross between a lizard and a vulture. It screeched and flew straight at Silverwinter, while it was busy attacking her I got the hell out of the way. Eli had leapt out and attacked one of the Scyrax, I’m pretty sure I heard ribs breakin’ when he hit him but he kept on chantin’ despite havin’ to be in a lot of pain. I think we all figured that meant that the chant was pretty important and tied in to the creature somehow so we focused on the Scyrax and left Silverwinter to deal with the demon. They went down pretty quickly with us all concentratin’ on them and while the creature did seem to weaken somewhat it didn’t get sucked back down the pit it came from ……… Dammit!

So now we turned out attention to the demon, Silverwinter had been hurt but was holding her own ….. impressive …… shame she’s such a bitch …… once Eli came flying in though she got out of there and continued to cast from a safer distance. It was takin’ a hammerin’, especially once Eli worked out it’s weak spot, he’s good like that, and then Bryn came chargin’ across the room, leaps right across the pit and comes smashin’ down right on to the demon. Took it down, now that was impressive!

We searched the room but didn’t find much, Eli and Ash took some stuff from the demon and then we crossed the room to a set of doors. We figured that if there was anything there they would know we were comin’ after all the noise from the fight so we just flung it open and went on in. We found a giant chained to a couple of pillars in the centre of the room. First portals and giant lizards, then a dragon and now a giant, a fire giant at that. The chains holding him were highly magical and were giving off cold, you could see the burns the cold had given him where the chains were wrapped around his arms.

He didn’t notice us until I spoke, asked him how he got here. He said that he had once ruled this place but was now a captive instead, made some interestin’ claims about the dragon bein’ his friend. Turns out whoever had deposed him hadn’t been seen for some time now and Nualia had come in and taken over. He thought that we were after the swords but we told him that all we wanted was to kill Nualia. After a bit of talkin’ we decided we would free him, I was kinda hopin’ that he might be wantin’ to get rid of Nualia but he just said that as long as we left him alone he would leave us be. Told us to take care in the next room and to conserve our energy, whatever that meant…..

What it meant was that in the first part of the next room spells didn’t work, much to mine and Silverwinter’s disgust. The room was more like a cavern split in two by a river. The other half of the cavern was raised and there was an arch of stairs crossing the river. When we moved in to the first part of that cavern two earth elementals emerged and attacked the party, that was when I worked out that there was a problem usin’ magic here. Spells that were already runnin’ weren’t affected but ant new ones cast just failed…… luckily the rest of the group was able to take care of the elementals without too much trouble.

Across the cavern we could see Nualia engaged in some sort of ritual at an altar and three robed figures standing watch. Ash took a shot with her bow but it hit some sort of barrier at the edge of the river, looks like a long distance fight was out of the question. Crossing the arch we found a crumpled figure at the foot of a doorway, on top of the doorway was perched stone dragon with a glowing ball of energy in its claw, a shimmer in the doorway hinted at some sort of magical barrier. The crumpled figure was well and truly dead, it was the sorceress follower of Nualia, the one that got away from us back at Thistletop. When Eli bent down and touched her though her eyes opened, even dead she was still under the effects of some sort of spell. Eli wondered, out loud, what had happened and the dead woman answered. It seemed like there was some sort of speak with dead spell active on her and as soon as we realised that we started questionin’ her. Turns out that she had sacrificed herself to protect Nualia while she was performin’ the ritual. Apparently the only way for us to get through the barrier was to either make a similar sacrifice …… Eli looked at Silverwinter ….. or to got through with a “pure heart”.

Eli tried going through but was held back by the barrier, obviously none of us were going to sacrifice ourselves, although we were willing to sacrifice Silverwinter, but I didn’t think it would count if she wasn’t willin’ somehow.

We asked the dead woman what the hell she meant by a “pure heart” and she said we could only pass the doorway if we entered with no secrets ………

Ash said that she didn’t have any secrets from us and stepped through the doorway, her grin at her success didn’t last too long though. Not once she realised she couldn’t get back through and the three guardians turned towards her.

Confession time!

There was brief pause and then Eli says “I’m in a relationship with the General” and stepped through the door after Ash. Bryn, Freyja and I all just looked at each other – when the hell had that happened?………. The General!………..Really?……

Bryn shrugged and said, “well, I don’t have any secrets from you lot” and she stepped through. Boring!

Freyja looked down and admitted to killing her mother before darting through the door to join the fight. If I remember correctly her mother was human, I wonder if it was in childbirth? Maybe not …… still, it’s her business, if she wants to talk now that it’s out, I’ll listen, but I’ll not pry.

That just left Silverwinter and me. I couldn’t leave them to face Nualia without me so I had to admit the one secret I keep, the one thing that not even Freyja knew about me. My mother was a Hag. I saw Eli through a quick glance my way when I said it, they all heard, they had to for it to work with the spell, otherwise it would still be a secret. People treat me differently without knowin’ what me mother was ………

Silverwinter hesitated when she got to the doorway but finally admitted to havin’ made an alliance with the General and needin’ the sword to destroy her biggest rival here to make good on the alliance. Stupid bitch, if we had know that earlier things might have worked out differently, although she did keep droppin’ fireballs on the group, so maybe not…..

While we dealt with the three guardians Nualia was busy trying to complete whatever ritual she was in the middle of. She had a circle of 7 candles over the altar and over 6 of them a sword was hoverin’ in the air. She had the seventh in her hand and was trying to get it to join the circle …. maybe? At any rate, whatever she was tryin’, it didn’t work and she screamed in frustration …. then turned towards us. By this time the guardians were all dead, Nualia cast some sort of nasty lookin’ spell which hit Bryn, Silverwinter and Ash pretty hard. Bryn actually came to me for healin’ before rushin’ back in to fight. The fight was short but nasty, I spent the whole time dartin’ around in the background healin’ everyone to keep them up and fightin’. At the end of it Nualia was dead, so was Silverwinter. She had fallen and before I could get to her Nualia had used some sorta flame strike spell and Silverwinter was in the area of effect. i was in two minds about healin’ her but didn’t get a chance to make up my mind. Must say it was a bit disappointin’ overall, I mean, Silverwinter died but we didn’t get to kill her, I had some great new spells to try out and didn’t get to cast even one of em…… oh well.

After that we collected up the swords Nualia had been using in the ritual, they weren’t all that magical anymore, and looted everything worthwhile and then made our way back to the surface. Saw no sign of the Dragon or the Giant on the way, everything was strangely quiet, even the group. We collected our mounts, was good to see nothing had happened to Shadowmist, mind you, I think it’s more likely that something would have happened to whoever was tryin’ to mess with him, he still doesn’t like people. Can’t say I blame him.

The trip back out of the wastes was uneventful ….. and sandy, gods but I hate this place ………… the trip was quiet as well, no one had much to say, all caught up in our own thoughts. Ash tagged along, wanting to get out of the place as well. She seemed to think she might get rewarded for helping us, hah! I reminded her that helping us was in payment for us getting her out of that cage. Then she says that she’s never met a General before and wants to tag along in case she might get some work out of it…….she’s an odd one.

We returned to Kyrien and sent word to the General. We had barely unpacked our gear when we received a summons to her office. She was surprised to see us back, hadn’t expected us for some weeks yet and wanted an explanation. We filled her in on the details and while she wasn’t exactly unhappy about Silverwinters death she wasn’t exactly pleased either. She was pleased that Nualia was dead though so that was something. She then enquired about our investigation at Sandpoint and i said that we needed to follow up the lead on the traps from Magnimar and she suggested we do just that then. I also reported Jarods death, thanks to Silverwinter, and introduced Ash. The General wasn’t impressed and wasn’t going to hire her as she had hoped for, she did say that if we wanted to hire her then that was up to us. I don’t think she actually thimnks about what she’s going to say before it comes out her mouth cause then she said that she only had loyalty to herself and would do a job if she was paid ….. loyal only to herself ….. that’s reassuring, and something to keep in mind if she stays around.

A night of rest in town and then it’s off to Magnimar, I don’t suppose they’ll like witches there any better than anywhere else, I could do with a bit of companionship ……………..